Category: Press

Novastone, a London based Fintech was last night crowned Best Client Communications at the WealthBriefing GCC Region Awards 2017, which was held at the prestigious Taj Dubai. One of 5 firms to be shortlisted in the Client Communications category, the triumph is yet another milestone in the company’s drive to be recognised as one of the pre-eminent players in the competitive secure chat space. The summary of the judges comments on Novastone’s solution was:

“Our winner has devised innovative messaging solutions for high value client interaction across various areas of banking. This has had a clear and positive impact on improving RMs time management.”

Showcasing ‘best of breed’ providers in the global private banking, wealth management and trusted advisor communities, the awards were designed to recognise companies, teams and individuals which the prestigious panel of judges deemed to have ‘demonstrated innovation and excellence during 2017’.

Commenting on the firm’s triumph, Douglas Orr, Founder & CEO, Novastone said: “We are delighted to have been voted the winner of this prestigious award by so many of the industry’s great and good. It is a great honour to be recognised in these inaugural awards, and testament to the hard work that the team have put in over the last 12 months. Everyone has really pulled together to ensure we continue to deliver the highest level of service to our clients”.

ClearView Financial Media’s CEO, and Publisher of WealthBriefing, Stephen Harris, was first to extend his congratulations to all the winners. He said: “The firms who triumphed in these awards are all worthy winners, and I would like to extend my heartiest congratulations. These awards were judged solely on the basis of entrants’ submissions and their response to a number of specific questions, which had to be answered focusing on the client experience, not quantitative performance metrics. That is a unique, and I believe, compelling feature. These awards recognise the very best operators in the private client industry, with ‘independence’, ‘integrity’ and ‘genuine insight’ the watchwords of the judging process – such that the awards truly reflect excellence in wealth management. I am optimistic that these annual awards will become one of the brightest highlights in the wealth management calendar.”

SecurityWeek recently reported on the Electronic Communications Compliance Survey which surveyed over 100 financial services individuals. The results are, as expected, showing how challenging it is for financial institutions to manage and ensure full compliance for a multitude of communication channels. Indeed, over 50% of firms are concerned about their compliance on non e-mail communication channels. This combined with 47% of firms being examined in the past year (up from 27% in 2015) tells a powerful story for the need of compliant and secure communication channels. Long gone are the days where archiving your e-mail messages was enough. Organizations now need to keep track of many sources of messages with many of them being sent through external networks such as social media, public instant messaging, text messages, etc. Multiple solutions can be considered to tackle these issues, but a great place to start is by centralizing and offering a best in class chat platform to your employees and clients. This reduces the number of channels not being controlled, improves compliance and enhance both staff and client engagement.

All that — and, on occasion, even legally dubious information — is increasingly being trafficked over the new private lines of Wall Street: encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal.

From traders to bankers and money managers, just about everyone in finance is embracing these apps as an easy, and virtually untraceable, way to circumvent compliance, get around the HR police and keep bosses in the dark. And it’s happening despite the industry’s efforts to crack down on unmonitored communications, according to conversations with employees at more than a dozen of Wall Street’s most recognizable firms.

In many ways, the development reflects a cultural shift. At big banks and small shops alike, rowdy trading desks and the boys-will-be-boys ethos are no longer tolerated, at least publicly. But the widespread use of encrypted apps is also raising a deeper concern: It could enable reckless behavior that’s all but impossible to police and lead to abuses like the chat-room scandals involving Libor manipulation and currency rigging.

“You’re really able to operate outside of the bank,” said William McGovern, a former SEC branch chief and senior lawyer at Morgan Stanley who now works at law firm Kobre & Kim. “We have seen in our investigations that the ground is shifting under everyone, and technology changes are driving a lot of it.

A former investment banker has been fined by the City watchdog for sharing messages on WhatsApp which contained confidential client information.

Christopher Niehaus, an ex-anaging director at Jefferies, has been handed a £37,000 fine by the Financial Conduct Authority which said he wanted “to impress the people that he shared the information with”.

The watchdog said he “received client confidential information during the course of his employment and, on a number of occasions between 24 January and 16 May 2016, shared that information with both a personal acquaintance and a friend, who was also a client of the firm”.

In one of the instances where Mr Niehaus shared client confidential information with his friend, who was also a client of the firm, that information was about a competitor. Mr Niehaus used the instant messaging application “WhatsApp” to share this information,” said the FCA.

The information shared included client identities, mandates and fees but the FCA said neither Niehaus nor any other individuals involved “dealt in any securities relating to these disclosures and it is accepted that this information was not shared by Mr Niehaus with that expectation”.

The fine was reduced from more than £50,000 after a full admission and agreement to settle early on in the watchdog’s investigation by Niehaus, who left the bank before a disciplinary process was completed.

How secure mobile messaging can combat fraud, reduce compliance risk and support client engagement. This novastone whitepaper offers detailed insight to the current risks and key factors to look for in the selection of technology.

Angel Investment Network (AIN) are delighted to announce that they have recently completed four deals through their network. AIN helped Novastone to close off its last angel round which was oversubscribed in under 3 weeks. Novastone aims to disrupt the banking sector by giving a compliant, instant mobile and web messaging platform to handle client relationships. It has been shortlisted for the FT’s Future of Fintech Awards 2016 and its founder was invited to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss the future of fintech. Novastone’s platform comes at a crucial time for the banking sector (Deutsche Bank have just banned Whatsapp) and its technology delivers the speed and convenience of instant chat, with the security of biometric scanning and banking grade encryption. Continue reading “Angel Investment Network announces four new deals”

Greetings from the Novastone team. Following is a quick update that Douglas Orr our founder and CEO has been invited by Innovate Finance to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.

Novastone has been selected as one of the 13 firms to represent the UK’s fintech community. This is a great opportunity to showcase Novastone to business and political leaders. Please see some news items below.

Deutsche Bank AG has banned text messages and communication apps such as WhatsApp on company-issued phones in an effort to improve compliance standards.

The functionality will be switched off this quarter, chief regulatory officer Sylvie Matherat and chief operating officer Kim Hammonds told staff in a memo on Friday. Unlike e-mails, text messages can’t be archived by the bank, said a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

“We fully understand that the deactivation will change your day-to-day work and we regret any inconvenience this may cause,” Matherat and Hammonds said in the memo obtained by Bloomberg. “However, this step is necessary to ensure Deutsche Bank continues to comply with regulatory and legal requirements.”

The policy also applies to private phones used by employees for work purposes. Communication apps such as WhatsApp, Google Talk, iMessage are also prohibited, the memo said.

You may have heard that Novastone was recently named as one of the top fintech firms by the Financial Times. In their Future of Fintech Awards, Novastone was shortlisted by the FT along with four other early stage firms as a leading fintech innovator from more than 220 entrants.

It was a privilege to be one of the companies representing UK FinTech at the inaugural Singapore Fintech Festival. Our guide for this trip, the UK Department of International Trade (formerly UKTI), ensured a packed agenda of meetings with local financial industry leaders and local experts.

The first thing that impressed me about Singapore is the modern and effective infrastructure. Like London, its one of those cities that work. You can have six meetings in a day and it’s no problem. The place is clean and safe. Perhaps the biggest threat is the almost constant rain that’s to be expected during the rainy season. There is much that is familiar for UK residents and visitors from the retailers to use of common law that it’s easy to feel at home. Continue reading “A PERSONAL FINTECH BRIDGE TO SINGAPORE”